Our Whole School Reads Programme gives students the opportunity to read innovating and intriguing novels which allows students to experience different cultures, time periods, and social problems across their time at OHA. We currently have thirty different novels that a student will read from Year 7 to Year 11 including autobiographical novels and historical fictions. This initiative is to improve students’ reading skills and to develop their love of reading. The initiative is led by Personal Tutors and staff read aloud to their classes. This also allows students to develop their inference skills as class discussions are encouraged throughout this programme.
The Reading Leaders Programme is a great way of improving literacy attainment and wider engagement across the curriculum by training older students to support younger ones for whom reading is a challenge. The Reading Leaders Programme is designed to train, support and credit young people to help students at least two years younger than themselves improve their reading skills, attitude towards reading and reading confidence.
We currently have ten Year 10 students supporting Year 7 students once a week and reading War Horse by Michael Morpurgo.
Lexonik is a small group intervention which develops students reading and vocabulary skills. This is used support some of our weakest readers in the academy. We have two members of staff conducting Lexonik training with four students per group. Our current members of staff who run these sessions are Mrs S Anthony and Mrs N Richardson.
Our library facilities are open for all students to access throughout the school day. Students can check out books from a variety of genres including a wide variety of non-fiction books. Our librarian is on hand to assist any students who are struggling to find a book which best suits them. Students can access the library during Homework Clubs afterschool and they go into the library once every other week with their English Teacher to enjoy the library facilities.
Throughout the year we have a variety of activities going on which promotes reading, including: National Poetry Day, World Book Day, Shakespeare Day, and many more! We also have a close relationship with our local library at Tunstall who come into the academy annually to gives Year 7 students their own library card for the local library.